HABIT AND DOMESTICATION. 303 
feeds it without stint and without restraint. If taken after a 
few months old, its wildness seems ineradicable. I once caught a 
fawn in December in the deep snow, which had become so ema- 
ciated that it could not escape, and placed it in a comfortable 
stall in the barn. So soon as it became warm, and recovered 
something of its vitality, it made frantic efforts to escape. It, 
however, soon commenced to eat, if no one was present, when it 
recovered its strength and spirit. It was kept in the same com- 
fortable quarters during the winter, and got in fine condition, but 
seemed absolutely untamable, though daily efforts were made by 
the keeper to acquire its confidence. Whenever he would go into 
the stall and try to pet it, it would make strong efforts to escape 
by jumping against the sides, and when it found that impossible, 
it would turn and fight him, dealing fierce blows with its little 
feet ; and when it was turned out in April, it seemed as wild as at 
the first, though it had received nothing but kindness from him 
during its four months of confinement. It hastened away to the 
flock, and was the sleekest deer of them all, and by this means 
it was recognized for a time, but none of them was wilder than 
he was so long as he could be identified. 
More efforts have been made to domesticate this deer than any 
of our other species, and generally under more favorable circum- 
stances than my grounds afford. Some years since I visited the 
plantation of General Harding, near Nashville, Tennessee, to learn 
the result of his experiments. I found his parks much larger 
than mine and the conditions much more favorable for success. 
Here was a large, gently rolling lawn carpeted with a heavy coat 
of blue grass, and scattered through it a great’ number of mag- 
nificent old oaks, whose broad spreading branches afforded a de- 
lightful shade everywhere. Beyond, and separated from it by a 
low fence which the deer could easily scale, was an inclosure of 
high rolling ground densely covered with a thicket of evergreen 
cane and several other kinds of shrubbery, of which nearly all 
ruminants are very fond. The grounds were well watered. 
Here we find every condition requisite for the well being of 
the deer, with little restraint and conditions nearly approach- 
ing the wild state. The deer we met with in driving through 
the grounds were wilder than most of mine, and yet they did 
not seem alarmed when we approached them but trotted away so 
as to keep some distance off. I learned they were reasonably 
fertile, though not as much so as in the wild state. At the com- 
mencement of the late war there were about eighty deer in these 
